What it takes to get the job done

Computer science graduates should finish their studies raring to go, ready for work, but employers know they often need further training, to turn theory into practical expertise. That can be done through on-the-job mentoring, but many TAFE diplomas can make people useful from day one. That's because they focus less on passing exams and meeting academic criteria, and more on providing vocational skills.

As a general rule, when an IT project needs boosting with low-cost IT skills without delay, TAFE diploma rather than university degree graduates are often better suited. Churning out about 200 a year is Swinburne University's TAFE division in Melbourne. Richard Forster, a teacher of the diploma in IT software development, says with 380 contact hours per semester, hands-on TAFE training is more intense than a university course.

"Our year is 50 per cent longer than a university year," Forster says. "And our students do twice as much programming as university students would do in their first two years."

Forster says this makes TAFE students more work-ready, although they may need to pick up additional university subjects for career advancement later on. In this case, the diploma subjects can count towards a university degree on a two-for-one basis. So, with lower entry requirements and fees of only $720 a year, a TAFE IT diploma is an attractive alternative.

The crowning achievement of the Swinburne program comes when the teaching is put into practice at the end of the second semester, as students are thrown into real-world projects such as those listed at cit3.cdn.swin.edu.au. One of Swinburne's TAFE clients is Monash University's Dr Ashley Buckle, of the Victorian Bioinformatics Consortium, who is a lecturer in biochemical and molecular biology. At the moment, his considerable software development needs are met entirely by TAFE students.

"We can get a five-month project done very effectively," Buckle says. "(Swinburne students) have a defined aim of delivery on the project to get their diploma. But students doing a computer science degree are interested in the broader issues. The diploma students are more applied."

This is Buckle's second year using Swinburne TAFE and he says students quickly grasp the principles of plotting three-dimensional protein crystals using a robot. The computer program they are developing crunches masses of data to improve the chances of growing these proteins, allowing them to be mass-produced for research with the aim of curing disease.

"They are bright kids with almost no knowledge of the scientific process," Buckle says. "Yet they are able to produce applications. Initially there is quite a lot of supervision as we plan out the project's scope, delivery and timelines. Over the weeks they become more independent, reducing to a weekly meeting with us."

One of last year's diploma students assigned to the Bioinformatics Consortium was Shaun Ervine. After a four-month job search, he's employed as a programmer with Shine Technologies, working on a Java-based application for Sensis. Ervine says the TAFE system was probably the only way he could become qualified, being "more practical and hands-on".

"There's not as much theory," he says. "I find it easier to learn by doing practical work instead of just reading or being spoken to."

The principal of the 25-strong development house, Mark Johnson, describes Ervine, who gained the job through cold-calling, as "fantastic".

"He's the second person we've got from the Swinburne course," Johnson says. "Their level of knowledge is excellent and they have learned a lot of real-life lessons in the course. It's the real world of software development as opposed to the theoretical world of computer science."

Johnson's other diploma graduate, Jason Brownlee, gained his position in the company by beating out other degree-holding applicants. Now he's going on with higher university studies, subsidised by his employer.

"He wanted to do that and we wanted to reward him," Johnson says. "But in my personal opinion, he didn't need to go on with it."

All this and still a university degree continues to have a higher perceived value than a TAFE diploma.

Eric Wilson will be a keynote speaker at the TAFE Frontiers Flexible Learning Week Conference, to be held in Melbourne on August 16.